Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2016

Friday, 16th September 2016

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in association with Insight Investment and BBC Sky at Night Magazine. Now in its eighth year, the competition received a record number of over 4500 entries from over 80 countries

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The scientist said: "The current biggest threat to our planet in probability is probably the solar storm.

"There was the Carrington Event of 1859, which if that happened today it could probably take out all the world's power grids and impact our telecommunications networks, knock out the internet on the ground, and take down GPS systems."

During the Carrington Event, telegraph systems all over the world failed – with operators across Europe receiving electronic shocks and pylons exploding in showers of sparks.

In June 2013, Lloyd's of London used data from the event to predict the damage from a similar event today, clocking it at £2.6 trillion.

GETTY

FIREBALL: The Sun is constantly fluctuating between 'Solar Max and Solar Minimum'

Dr Pelton: "These storms, with ions travelling at millions of miles an hour, when they hit the Earth's atmosphere basically it slams way out and all these systems go down.

"Power systems go down, pipelines go down, for me this is the biggest threat in the next 50 years, and on top of that the Earth's magnetic field is shifting and that affects the Van Allen Belts which protect us from these solar storms.

"There are some projections which say in the next 50 years these will be down to just 15% of what they are today. So in terms of real threats from the cosmos, that for me is number one."

Fears grow for European Schiaparelli Mars lander

Wednesday, 19th October 2016

European Space Agency send the Schiaparelli module to Mars

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PA

Artist's impression issued by the European Space Agency of the separation of the ExoMars 2016

Professor David Alexander, director of the Rice Space Institute at Rice University, Houston, Texas, said: "Just think about what would happen if London lost its power for three days, the chaos would be immeasurable."

He warned about the impact solar storms could have on self-driving cars, saying "you could end up having 5 metre shift, and if you are in a self driving car on the M25, you can going to have a major impact".

The scientist added work is currently under way to explore an advance warning system so we can "predict arrival times and strengths".